Manufacturer’s Marketing Challenges of 2018

Today, websites need to be more than just a few pretty pages. They have become essential marketing sales tools built to attract visitors, convert them into leads and ultimately customers. If you’re running an outdated manufacturing website it may be damaging your business – doing more harm than good.

Buyers now research online before contacting you, and your website is likely to be where they will form their first opinion of your business. Your website is your virtual storefront. It’s a place for people to research your company, purchase or review products and services, find answers to their questions, and solutions to their problems.

If you’ve got what your potential buyer is looking for, that’s a great start. The next step is to determine what it is that industrial buyers want from your manufacturing website. Think about how a buyer becomes aware of your products and services, evaluates them and purchases them. You’ll then be in a great position to achieve results from your website.

Turning Potential Customers into Actual Customers

The idea is to make sure you put your company in front of the right people at the right time. To ensure this, it’s critical to prepare a wealth of effective marketing content for many different stages of the buyer’s journey; for example, a blog post might help someone better understand a specific industry problem, while a detailed FAQs page may assist them in their decision-making process when they’re closer to buying.

It’s said that people don’t come to industrial manufacturing websites just for fun — they typically know what they need or what to look for. Visitors to your website have a goal. They want to compare their options and gather the details they need to make a decision. Your customers want to know the specifications and performance characteristics of your products. Supplying your target audience with as much useful information as possible while they’re researching will increase your chances of converting potential customer into actual customers.

Getting Found Online

It doesn’t matter what buyers want on your website if they never get there in the first place. The key to being found by engineers, plant managers, maintenance supervisors, etc., is to produce content that is helpful to them when they have a problem they want to solve or a goal they want to achieve.

Ask yourself what leads your potential buyers to your products and services. How do they define their problems or goals? Speak in their language and provide optimised content that Google and your buyers will find.

When marketing funds are limited, it’s crucial to ensure that the money spent produces high-quality results. The most effective marketing method that can be employed on a budget is online marketing. Top performers in the manufacturing sector are also digital enthusiasts, investing a high percentage of their advertising budget on internet marketing.

Creating Engaging Content

The exact signals that Google uses in its search algorithm are secret, but we do know that Google has told us repeatedly that we should create quality content. I think that’s good advice.

With trade show budgets on the decline, businesses across all industries are releasing more material online. Unfortunately this trend has led to a saturation of low-quality content. The good news is that because strong content is lacking there’s an opportunity for you to capture someone’s attention with high-quality content.

Create content that is useful, educational, helpful, and informative. Valuable and varied content will allow you to catch prospects’ attention throughout many different stages of the buyer’s journey.

Do you make it easy for your customer to find and contact a sales rep? Make it easy for your customers to act. This will also make things much easier for your sales team when it’s time to begin a conversation.

Vague marketing language that drones on, extolling your company and its values, will only annoy or bore your users. They don’t want marketing guff; they want useful, real content. Once visitors arrive on your website, they want someone to explain your products and services and offer evidence as to why you are better than your competition.

Updating Your Outdated Website

First impressions matter, and when it comes to your website the look and feel of your site will help determine whether your visitor stays or goes. Your visitors will judge and compare your site to your competitor’s sites, and others they visit.

Styles change over time. Many manufacturing websites I’ve visited were designed and built many years ago – some as far back as 10 years. What seemed cutting edge at the time now looks tired and outdated. If yours is out of date it will be perceived as less professional.

Solution

I can help you to get out of an endless cycle of website redesign and set you up for future successes with a fully featured, useful, content rich, attractive and up-to-date website. Aside from giving you a great web presence, you will also have an authoritative, solid model that will shape the rest of your marketing efforts.

Anita - i4design

20 years experience working with computers and technology - starting out in company IT support, then network and server admin, and now building and maintaining sites for clients- the perfect way to combine a love of tech, design and helping people with tech-related issues.